


know this much is true

by JayDelahaye



Series: As It Should Be [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4738685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayDelahaye/pseuds/JayDelahaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling into Pete's World, the Doctor gets a glimpse of how striding parallels has affected Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	know this much is true

**Author's Note:**

> timepetalsprompts assigned me royaltyoftimeandspace for their awesome matchmaking promo thing! Gio mentioned angst, sadness, hurt/comfort and fluff, and happy endings, and I think this hits all those marks.

The Doctor doesn’t realise it’s a scream he was woken up by, because the kick in the stomach follows so close behind. Gasping and sitting up in bed, he sees Rose thrashing about, pulling at the blankets and sheets, her eyes screwed shut as she shrieks. 

“Rose! Rose, wake up, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay,” he wheezes, still recovering from her blow to his midsection and reaching for her flailing arms. 

“NO! No no no no, no, please, please no, please, please, no…” she shrieks, pushing him away and almost slipping off the bed. The Doctor scrambles after her and gently guides her down to the floor, wrapping the blanket that came with them around Rose’s shoulders and trying to soothe her with his voice and his arms around her. 

Rose’s pleas have dissolved into incoherent wails by the time Jackie and Pete rush into the bedroom. Jackie’s not bothered with a dressing gown, and she kneels next to her daughter while Pete turns on the light and stands nearby. Rose jumps when Jackie puts her hand on her shoulder and asks what happened. 

“Nightmare,” the Doctor says. “She kicked me in the gut.” Rose still has her face buried in the Doctor’s shoulder, her cries finally beginning to quiet. Jackie can see the fear in the Doctor’s eyes, shock and his own terror marring his features. 

“She had them a lot before she found you,” Jackie explains, reaching to stroke Rose’s back. “Saw a lot of awful stuff going through that cannon, had a lot of really terrible things happen to her. Wouldn’t stop jumping, though, even after she saw the psychologists and they said… well. Nothing would stop her.”

The Doctor squeezes Rose tighter and buries his face in her hair. She hasn’t told him any of this yet, only vaguely that it took a lot of tries to get to the right universe, and that it was pretty rough. He remembers the vacant expression she took on when she’d said this, the way her skin went pale and her lips shut in a thin line. It’s early days for them, still living with the Tylers, still not entirely sure what to make of each other and this whole metacrisis business, so he’d not pressed the issue, just held her and told her he was glad she’d made it, but then he hadn’t imagined just how rough it could have been. The Doctor cursed himself for not thinking of that, for not remembering all the infinite and horrific possibilities that parallel universes presented. That Rose, _his_ Rose, could have gone through even a miniscule fraction of any of them and he didn’t know, let alone couldn’t help, made him feel ill. 

At the corner of his hearing there’s Tony in the doorway asking what’s happened, and Pete leading his son down the hall. Jackie’s telling Rose, “All right sweetheart, let’s get you back into bed,” and tugging on the Doctor’s arm to get him to stand. He scoops Rose into his arms and lets Jackie help him disentangle the covers. Rose is still crying, almost silently now, clutching to the Doctor for dear life. He’s not sure if she’s actually awake or not but she won’t let him go and he awkwardly settles on the bed with her. Jackie tucks the blankets around the two of them and says she’ll be right back. She returns with two mugs of chamomile, setting them on the bedside table and herself on the edge of the bed. 

“Are you okay Doctor?” Jackie asks. He nods, even though he looks like he’ll start crying himself any minute. “Just let her cry it out. She usually sleeps all right afterwards but you call me if she doesn’t, yeah?” He nods again and switches on the lamp. “And you come talk to me too, if you need. Don't go thinking you're alone here."

“Thanks Jackie,” he whispers. 

“Not at all,” she says, leaning forward and kissing both Rose and the Doctor on their foreheads before she leaves, shutting off the overhead light as she goes. 

The Doctor’s not quite sure what else to do besides drink the tea, rub Rose’s back and murmur reassurances, but it seems to be working. Her breath is still hitching, but her hand is relaxing its grip on his shirt.

"It's okay, Rose," the Doctor says tentatively. "I'm right here. You found me, you found me and I've got you now. We're going to be okay." 

He hears her take a slow, shaky and deliberate breath, in and out, once, twice, three times, her inhales deep and exhales long and controlled. The Doctor recognises her relaxation technique and tries sync up his own breath with hers. And finally, she whispers, "I was so scared." Her voice is hoarse and she coughs, trying not to cry again.

The Doctor tilts her face to look at him and kisses her gently on her cheeks. "I know. It's over now, I'm right here." He offers her the tea and tissues, which she accepts gratefully. "Better?"

"A little. Thank you." She takes another deep breath and lies back down, burrowing under the covers and curling into the Doctor's embrace. "I don't want to think about it anymore."

"That's okay. Just sleep. I love you."

"Love you too."

It takes a while, but Rose is soon asleep. What little is left of the night is quiet, but the Doctor doesn't drift off himself until the sky starts to lighten. 

When he opens his eyes again, Rose is already awake, lying still and watching him. She blushes when he catches her, and he reaches into the gap between them to take the hand that’s resting near their pillows. 

“Hey,” he murmurs. 

“Hey.” Rose squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry about last night.”

The Doctor’s chest tightens. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I was a bit of a mess.”

He’s not sure if she remembers just how much of a mess, so he doesn’t mention the ache that remains in his belly from her lashing out. “You had a good reason for it.” He shifts closer, kisses her forehead. “Did you sleep all right after?”

Rose nods. “You?”

He hadn’t, but isn’t going to say so. “Yeah, fine. Rose… that was one hell of a nightmare.” She doesn’t answer, just rolls onto her back and sighs, staring at the ceiling. She has to let go of his hand to do it and it the Doctor feels untethered. He props himself up on his elbow. “Why didn’t you tell me how bad they were?”

She rubs her eyes with the back of her wrist, trying to play it off as getting the sleep out, but the Doctor can see they’re welling up. “I thought about it… but I hadn’t had one since we got here, so I figured they were over and maybe I could talk about it later, when we’d settled in. But I guess not.” Rose takes a deep breath, her exhale long and shuddering. 

The Doctor caresses her cheek, turns her face towards his. There’s any number of calming platitudes he could give her, but they all seem useless or patronising or worse. Instead he brushes her hair back from her face, strokes the soft skin of her temple, tries to convey just how sorry he is for all the pain and shit she went through trying to find him using the tips of his fingers and the sadness in his eyes. “You don’t have to right now. But when you’re ready, I do want to hear about it. About everything.”

Rose looks up at him with a watery smile. “Same goes for you, you know. Don’t look at me like that, I’ve heard you talking in your sleep.”

“Fair enough,” the Doctor says, sinking back down to the mattress. “In the meantime…”

“In the meantime,” Rose says, turning back to him and arranging his arms around her, “We’ll be okay. We’ve got each other, yeah?”

He pulls her close, and she kisses him like it’s the final word on the matter, and the Doctor supposes it is. “Yes. Always,” he says, and realises that this is the one truth to sustain them through the nightmares.


End file.
